The fraught racial politics of entrance exams for elite high schools

Last week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed a drastic change in the way students are admitted to the city’s elite high schools.

Students gain entry to one of these eight “specialized” schools by scoring high enough on a single exam called the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT). De Blasio has called for phasing out the exam and instead admitting the top students from each middle school.

This has prompted protests from Asian Americans who feel this policy disproportionately hurts them, as well as hand-wringing from graduates of these schools, who believe the move will lower the quality of the education at these institutions.

For decades, these elite schools have been a prime example of what a great secondary education could offer — but also a symbol of how rigged the system is. Since the 1970s, students, school officials, and even the US Office of Civil Rights have said that the admissions process hurts students of color.

Today, about 70 percent of New York high schools are black and Hispanic — but they account for just 10 percent of students in New York’s specialized high schools.